Force9 www.f9.net

I have never had ANY problems with Force 9. The customer services are excellent, i am always connected to an adviser in the UK within minutes. Once my broadband was down, and they gave me a dial up number to use free of charge. I think its great, their customer services are so helpful and i really appreciated the dial up whilst they repaired my broadband.

Great provider who i am very happy with and would recommend to anybody.

Like a few other reviewers I was also a Force9 customer for approx 3 years and initially they were very good and had no problems with them. Now wouldn't touch them with a barge pole!!!!! I moved house nearly six months ago and I'm still waiting for my broadband to be connected. I keep getting BT engineers sent round to check the line which is OK but as soon as they try and use my login details for F9 - Nothing. I also signed up for there call package as well and it took nearly three months for them to set it up. They also sent a router to a completely different address. On top of this you can never get to speak to anyone after 5pm or at weekends when people are at home. Overall, I would say Force9 have be one of the worst internet service providers available.

Force9 is a PlusNet company. But for this review I'll call them F9 for ease of typing.

When I first joined F9 a number of years ago they were excellent. Good support, fast reliable connection and some useful features.

However, in the last two years F9 have made a number of mistakes and found myself having to cancel after years of loyal service because I couldn't take it any longer.

Lets have a quick look at the catalog of errors.

We switched just after Christmas, when the loss of service wouldn't affect us very much. However, F9 failed twice to process our cancellation and have subsequently tried to claim back the funds for a service they terminated right away. After a short 'see you in court' they dropped their claims but will not hand back the £40 they took.

Add to this the fact they actively use packet filtering to make services like Skype perform badly; so you might want to choose their VOIP product instead. It's all very poor.

On the few occasions I did speak to their technical staff they tried to tell me a load of rubbish, not realizing I've been working in IT for nearly 15 years. My favorite was that "I've been using it too much.".

They constantly change their contracts to favor their issues, and you have no choice.

So, would I recommend F9. ABSOLUTELY NOT.

It's another case of a good ISP turned bad.

As most comments about plusnet/force9 go, their service was excellent, however over the last 2 years, their customer support went downhill. Now that is back up and relatively (compared to 2 years ago) OK, their network structure is too small for their customer base. Meaning users are seeing close to dial up speeds.

Had no service for 2 months last summer, now had no service for a fortnight. I've been with F9 for 2.5 years. To start with they were excellent but in the last 12 months the service has been shocking. Very disappointed.

I joined Force 9 two years ago, and initially the service was good.

Within days though, I was unable to connect to the internet. After three phone calls a faulty ADSL filter was diagnosed. A replacement was promised to be sent out as soon as possible. Despite this being an item I had paid for it never arrived, and I eventually gave up calling and bought another form PC World.

Then I started getting disconnected. On phoning customer service, I was given the run around, with Force 9 denying their was a problem. This was a weekly occurrence.

My router would be unable to connect to ADSL for days at a time, and after frustrating phone calls to CS, I'd be none the wiser. Eventually the router would connect. I tried a number of routers and modems, but none of them solved the problem. These faults are on-going, and they are just part of life with Force 9.

The most recent problem, which is one that occurs after 4.00pm every day, as regular as clock work, is that my normal speed of around 950kbs drops to around 80 - 110kbs. I complained about this via the forum, only be told that there's no problem. I was told that I am a victim of contention because I am a broadband plus customer, and priority is given to premier and PAYG customers. So even though I pay for a service that is advertised as up to 8Mb, I'm only ever going to get that during the day when I'm at work and not able to use it. Clever marketing that one.

One of the Force 9 staff replied that he would be happy to change my account to PAYG so that I wouldn't have to suffer the crippling slow speeds at night. That was over a week ago, and I have not heard from him since, despite sending a personal message to him via the forum, that has even been answered.

The final straw for me was this week. Through no fault of my own, my direct debit to Force 9 was cancelled. The first I knew of this was two days after the due date. I logged on to the Force 9 portal to see a message splashed across the screen to say that my service was being cancelled, and the debt had been passed to a collection agency, and the service couldn't be re-connected, and because my home phone is also with Force 9 that was also cut off, leaving me to make expensive mobile calls to Force 9 to try and sort it out. They refuse to be paid by cheque, so I had no alternative but to ask a friend to pay using her card. I REMIND YOU, CUT OFF 48 HOURS AFTER THE BILL WAS DUE, and they are also going to charge me £5.76 next month for the privilege of being cut off.

Connection regularly fails - about once a week.

When I joined the download limit was 20GB. They then moved the goalposts & changed it without warning during the first few months to 4GB, which is causing problems. They make it difficult for you to leave even after the 12 month contract has expired - they charge a cancellation fee even after the 12 month contract under the guise of "you stay we pay", which they didn't tell me about when I joined.

I'm astonished by all the negative reviews I've read on this site! I wonder if I'm living on the same planet. The service status information is always frank and regularly updated. I've never come across everything being 'tickety-boo' when it isn't. I'm now devastated that PlusNet has sold Force9 out to BT. I bought into an independent ISP in the first place, to keep well away from AOL, BT and their like. Like breweries have discovered, independence will last five minutes.

I have been with Force9 for several years (under the brand Freeonline). Having never used another ISP I thought their regular problems were just par for the course but it would appear not. The latest problem resulted in my broadband being down for over two weeks (and still not restored). That came after two weeks of email services being so delayed that emails took over a week to arrive. Of course, if you check their service status it says everything is just tickety boo. The web based mail never worked properly and their excuse was that "it just doesn't for some users - we don't know why" Their tech help is slow, unhelpful and disinterested constantly blaming your hardware or third parties. Totally unacceptable. I'm moving and I advise you don't touch them even with the proverbial bargepole.

Don't use Force9, use someone else!